Neha Patel Hampton – How to Use Food and Storytelling to Remember Our Shared Humanity
“My relationship with food is now really firmly set with my desire to drive change.” - Neha Patel Hampton
What are you hungry for? It’s a question with answers that reveal more than our immediate desire for something salty or sour, crunchy or creamy. In my conversation with UK-based chef and social justice change-maker Neha Patel Hampton, we find out that food can heal literally and figuratively, bringing us back to ourselves and each other.
This episode feels like a chat over chai in a friend’s kitchen. It felt like that when we recorded it. Neha sprinkles tales of personal reclamation with lessons in world history and views on current events. Her stories remind me that none of us exists alone; our choices are informed by who and what came before us. For Neha, that’s her parents and the colonialism that forced them to build lives far from their home in Gujarat, India, enduring incredible pressures to assimilate as “obedient migrants.” Neha’s narrative is also flavored by boxes of rare, fragrant mangoes, the ultimate expression of life’s sweetness that will leave your mouth watering.
Cooking and sharing her cultural heritage are essential to Neha’s healing process. “I found a way to use food to educate people about our history.” Her supper club events provide a home for an exchange of ideas, inspirations, and delicious chapatis. “I'm there to share stories about what these dishes mean to me, where they come from, what the ingredients are,” she says, showcasing another way food binds us to one other. “If you look at dishes, some famous dishes of India only exist because the Portuguese brought ingredients to them. I can sit here and be really negative about the effects of colonization, but we have to also acknowledge that the food we know and love today exists because of that.” This intricate storytelling and weaving of culture is front and center in Neha’s dinners- trust me I’ve experienced them myself!
On top of cooking, Neha works with three different charities to improve the lives of migrants to the UK, people like her parents. “That makes me feel proud of myself,” she says. “It makes me feel proud to be Indian. It’s also helping me to find pride in being British because we need a change. If we don't recognize the history and where we came from, we can't change the future.”
GUEST CONTACT AND BIO
Neha Patel Hampton is many things! With over 20 years of experience in corporate, hospitality and charity settings, she now fights for social justice through her work with organisations who aim to improve the lives of those who migrate, and to fight racial and gender inequality. This is topped off with a heartfelt sprinkling of food and yoga as her way of bringing people together.
Let’s be friends! You can find me in the following places…
